In 2006, Cambridge University Press published my An Economic History of Twentieth-Century Europe: Economic Regimes from Laissez-Faire to Globalization. The book was met with an unexpected level of interest, and has been published in thirteen languages. This level of attention has encouraged me to go back to discover the deeper roots of Europe's contemporary economy – back to the nineteenth century, the period of the most dramatic discontinuity in European history. This earlier period is not unknown to me. I conducted research on the peripheral regions for about two decades, and published several related works with my late colleague and friend, György Ránki, in the 1970s and 1980s (Berend and Ránki, 1974, 1982, 1987). I am revisiting this topic after a quarter of a century.

Writing an economic history of an entire continent and over a long time period is a gargantuan task for any single person. My work, however, has benefited greatly from the extensive research and publications of hundreds of my American and European colleagues, whose works are broadly quoted in this book. Their works were mostly available in the outstanding Charles Young Research Library of UCLA.

I am extremely grateful to my anonymous reviewers for Cambridge University Press, who assisted me with their critical remarks and suggestions based on a previous version of this work. I am in debt to my commissioning editor, Michael Watson, with whom I have had an excellent work history for more than a decade preparing and publishing three books.